Environmental Economics

Errata: Estimating recreation benefits through joint estimation of revealed and stated preference discrete choice data

I recently received a request for the NLogit code for this article:

Whitehead, John C., and Daniel K. Lew. "Estimating recreation benefits through joint estimation of revealed and stated preference discrete choice data." Empirical Economics 58 (2020): 2009-2029.

I was happy to oblige but it took a second because, since we estimated those models, I had gone into the program and tried a bunch of attribute non-attendance models. The program was a mess. So, I had to hunt the different models down and rerun everything to make sure it was working and ... discovered a minor error in Table 6. The scaled multinomial logit model was estimated with both the revealed and stated preference data so the number of time periods should be 8 instead of 4. Ugh.

 

I think my future boss is telling me I have been doing things wrong my whole career.

Important new discussion paper from a star-studded cast of environmental and resource economists*...

...on the need for the environmental economics discipline to take better care in considering the systemic issues of race and justice in our research published by Resources for the Future:

Our paper argues that systemic racism is such a fundamental force in our world that, if we’re not careful, it will embed itself in the work we do, including well-intentioned efforts to improve environmental quality through research and policy. We define systemic racism as racial discrimination that extends beyond individual beliefs and interactions to pervade institutions, policies, and unwritten norms—in this case, racial discrimination that’s woven into the tools and conventions of environmental and natural resource economics. Even if we don’t think our work is “about” race and racism, systemic racism may be built into that work.

And particularly relevant for my (and John's) pursuit of better measures of willingness to pay and willingness to accept:

Willingness to pay and willingness to accept are two different ways of inferring how much a person values or cares about something...

But these measures embed systemic racism, regardless of the race of the people we’re studying. If people of color are blocked from living in a neighborhood that has plenty of green space because of discrimination, or if people of color know they’ll be made to feel unwelcome there, they will seem to have a low willingness to pay for a house in that neighborhood, and therefore they’ll seem to have low willingness to pay for green space. Another example we give in the paper is that racism can push some people to seek out recreational fishing locations where they’ll be less likely to encounter other races—a behavior that will distort these inferred values, as well.

Notably, a person’s willingness to pay for something is necessarily limited by their ability to pay—and systemic discrimination has limited the income and wealth of people of color, especially Black people. As a result, these groups of people may appear to value environmental and health-related amenities less. This phenomenon also can interfere with the measurement of people’s willingness to accept; for example, people who are constrained in their means and options may be forced to accept worse outcomes, though to a lesser extent.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day staring questioningly in a mirror.

*We are thrilled (some a little too thrilled) that Amy Ando is replacing me as Chair of the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at Ohio State in July. 

All pubs are good pubs

From the inbox:

I am [name] from [name] Publishing.

Would you be interested in publishing your work "Corrigendum: A revealed preference approach to valuing non-market recreational fishing losses from the Deepwater Horizon spill" as a paperback edition?

At [name]Publishing, we have worked with more than 250,000 authors, offering them international, free-of-charge publishing.
Can you imagine your work as a book?

The definition of corrigendum is "a thing to be corrected, typically an error in a printed book." So, yes, sure, I can definitely imagine my correction as a paperback book! Maybe a mystery where I'm the detective trying to uncover research errors of omission and suddenly I look in the mirror and find one of my own?

Actually, my reply was "no thanks."

And this blog could very well be exhibits A, B, and C...case closed.

Ummm...this:

"People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."

Quote of the Day: Yep, I'm REALLY that guy

"Are you REALLY the guy that wrote that book on nonmarket valuation?"

Nameless graduate student, to me, at lunch today

Context: I was honored to give the keynote address to open the International Society of Forest Resource Economics Annual Meeting, this morning (Proof here because I know most of you don't believe I would be invited to do this--I was invited because it was on campus and I was wiling to do it for free).  Because the audience was supposed to be* a mix of academics, industry-types, government officials, and graduate students, I decided to give the keynote blog-style (non-technical and UNscholarly).  Filled with anecdotes, and cartoons, and jokes, I talked about Revisiting the Principles of Economics: Lessons from Environmental and Resource Economics. 

I guess my approachable presentation style belies my academic credibility. 

*Turned out to be an all academic audience.  The one gov't rep in the room (Chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry) came up to me afterwards and said "Yours was that best presentation of the day...or at least it was the only one I sort of understood."  At least I made one person happy.  

 

For the 37th year in a row!

Whew! I'm only 6'3"

I had the pleasure today of attending (and paying for refreshments) for a program titled: Creating Confident Girls, Cultivating Women Who Lead, put on by a local organization called Ruling Our Experiences (Rox)

Rox' mission "IS TO EQUIP GIRLS WITH THE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS NECESSARY TO LIVE HEALTHY, INDEPENDENT,PRODUCTIVE AND VIOLENCE-FREE LIVES."

Being the father of three, two of whom are young women, interested in STEM fields and entering (or soon to be entering) the workforce, this is a subject I am personally interested in.

During the discussion today, a long-time colleague (and good friend) commented something to the effect "If you look around the University, most of the administration is 6'4" middle-aged white guys."

Good think I'm only 6'3". 

I wouldn't want to be part of the problem.

 

Teaching environmental economics with mini-research projects

My sophomore level environmental and resource econ course has a research component. The students are required to write an abstract suitable for submission to an undergraduate research conference. Most of the students are estimating Turnbull willingness to pay using dichotomous choice data from published papers employing regional case studies. As an exercise during the semester all of the students estimated Turnbull willingness to pay for the large and small oil spill scenarios using the same data from the BP/DWH federal study. Students who don't want to do contingent valuation for their project (aka, the "weirdos") are using experimental data (Veconlab experiments that we have conducted during the semester) to better understand environmental policy. We haven't spent much time talking about how to do this during class so I wrote, created and produced this video to help the students figure out what to do next (my allergies are bothering me so try to ignore the snorting and wiping up around my nose area). 

  

 

Here is a description of the experiment: 

Holt, Charles, Erica Myers, Markus Wråke, Svante Mandell, and Dallas Burtraw. "Teaching opportunity cost in an emissions permit experiment." International Review of Economics Education 9, no. 2 (2010): 34-42. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477388015300529

Update: journals making it difficult to review a paper

I emailed the link to my blog post to the journal that has me in their reviewer database twice so I can't log in to do the review. This is the reply I received less than an hour later. From the inbox:

Dear Whitehead,

Wait. "Dear Whitehead"? What, are you an undergraduate at a regional state university?

Thank you for considering the invitation to review manuscript [redacted], entitled [redacted]; however, since we have not heard back from you, we are moving forward with the review process. If you were intending to review this manuscript, or feel that this communication has reached you in error, please contact us by reply e-mail and we will update our records accordingly.
We look forward to working with you in the future.
Sincerely,
[redacted]

My reply was to send the link this blog post to the journal.

And no, there will be no working with you in the future.

*****

And in answer to the question that is on the mind every env-econ.net reader, Yes, I'm enjoying the process of destroying whatever positive reputation I had in the research community bit by bit.

 

What should a reviewer do when the journal increases the costs of providing a review?

It has gone down something like this:

1. Get a review assignment from a journal
2. Am unable to login to the journal website to retrieve the paper
3. Find out that the journal has created two accounts for me
4. Journal sends me the paper to review via email
5. Can't login to submit my review
6. I submit my review via email
7. Wait and try to enjoy life and work
8. I receive an invitation to review the revised paper
9. [Today] I'm now ready to submit my review
10. Forgetting my stupid password I attempt to receive it (see below)
11. Rinse, repeat ...